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Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... read full definition
53. Cash
Explanation and Analysis—Cash on Darl's Sanity:
Cash uses a simile in Chapter 53 to explain why Darl acts strangely:
I see all the while how folks could say he was queer, but that was the very reason couldn’t nobody hold it personal. It was like he was outside of it too, same as you, and getting mad at it would be kind of like getting mad at a mud-puddle that splashed you when you stepped in it.
Cash is perhaps the least judgmental character in the novel, rarely making up his mind definitively. He is often stoic (for example, he never complains about the pain of his broken leg), and dealing with Darl’s possible insanity is no exception. He is quite willing to accept Darl as he is, just as one must accept being splashed when one steps in a puddle of mud.
In Cash’s two examples, the situations are still unfortunate—someone got splashed by a mud-puddle, and Gillespie’s farm was burned down—but he argues that one cannot blame the things that caused these troubles, because causing trouble is simply in their nature. Cash’s perspective is unique among the rest of his family, perhaps because he is the only character who has moments of self-sacrifice.
This willingness to accept things for the way they are may contribute to Cash's stoicism and dutifulness, which he exhibits without question or recompense. The same logic that makes him sympathetic to Darl makes him martyr himself, which makes Cash something of a tragic figure too. No child is spared from the trauma of growing up in the Bundren family, even those who are seemingly well-adjusted.
Related Themes:
